Insanity: Obama To Ship Club Gitmo Monsters to U.S. for Trial

Absolute lunacy. Talk about inviting terrorist strikes on the homeland.

President-elect Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice.

During his campaign, Obama described Guantanamo as a "sad chapter in American history" and has said generally that the U.S. legal system is equipped to handle the detainees. But he has offered few details on what he planned to do once the facility is closed.

If he thinks Club Gitmo is a sad chapter, just wait until we look back on his administration.

No word on where these maniacs would be housed. Minor little details they haven't quite figured out yet, I guess.

According to three advisers participating in the process, Obama is expected to propose a new court system, appointing a committee to decide how such a court would operate. Some detainees likely would be returned to the countries where they were first captured for further detention or rehabilitation. The rest could probably be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts, one adviser said. All spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing talks, which have been private.

About the only thing crazier would be making Jamie Gorelick Attorney General.

Oh wait, that may happen.

MOHAMED THE BRIT AND GITMO

Do you think it possible that statistically speaking ALL of the in-mates at Guantanamo Bay are innocent little lambs? That is the line repeatedly peddled by the likes of the BBC if you read the latest items concerning the squealing from "British" inmate Binyam Mohamed. Mohamed gamely follows Al Queda training manual instructions and claims he was tortured. When he was captured by US forces, this cleaner from West London was travelling between Pakistan and Afghanistan, trying to resolve his .. ahem.. personal drug problems. As you do. His only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and now those pesky Yanks have gone and charged him with conspiring to commit terrorist offences in the US, including plotting to plant a so-called dirty bomb to spread radiation. Naturally the BBC immediately undermines this by stating that a previous AQ terrorist suspect in the shape of Jose Padilla got off when the same charges were made against him. It deliberately OMITS adding that Padilla was convicted by a US jury of conspiring to fund Jihad and the killing of people overseas. More BBC deception, giving you half the story in order to try and convince you that poor doe-eyed Mohamed is innocent. It strikes me that the BBC just loves providing airtime to the parasitic left-wing lawyers for these Gitmo captives who can then use this bully pulpit to further blacken the reputation of the US military and Presidency. In the case of this illegal Ethiopian asylum seeker - now labelled as "British" - the BBC is merely continuing its own war on the United States.

Cross posted on Biased BBC.

Shocker: NY Times Gives Byline to Guantanamo Critic, Plays Dumb When Caught

The relentless bias of the New York Times is exposed once again and sure enough, the alleged paper of record, with their layers of editors and factcheckers, claims they "were not aware" the author of a front-page story was an "outspoken critic" of U.S. policy.

Sure. And I have some oceanfront property in Nebraska up for sale.

Maybe a Times editor is interested in purchasing it.

The New York Times ran a front-page story critical of the Guantanamo anti-terror prison without checking to find out that its co-author was a bitter critic of the jail and of US policy, the newspaper acknowledged yesterday.

The paper's editors "were not aware" of the "outspoken position" of British freelancer Andy Worthington, who shared the byline on the article, according to an Editors' Note in the newspaper.

The story, which appeared Tuesday, described the case of an Afghan man who died in Guantanamo after five years' detention, allegedly on false charges of being a Taliban commander.

The newspaper acknowledged yesterday that its editors did not look up Worthington's Web site.

"Like many decent-minded citizens of the world I had been deeply concerned, from the moment Guantanamo opened in January 2002, that the US Administration's response to 9/11 was both cruel and misguided," Worthington wrote in an "About Me" section of the site.

The Times said that Worthington "did some initial reporting" for the article "but was not involved in all of it" and that the information he provided was confirmed by the newspaper.

It said that he should not have been listed as co-author and that his point of view and contribution to the article should have mentioned.

Worthington described himself as a freelance historian and journalist who wrote a sharply critical book about the prison, "The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774Detainees in America's Illegal Prison."

He declined to comment directly on the Editors' Note yesterday but said he would be "extremely disappointed if anyone were to presume" from the note that his book was not well researched.

That's completely beside the point. Worthington is not an objective reporter, and a simple check of his background would reveal his biases for all to see.

Why, look here, he's all over that non-partisan home to fair and balanced journalism, The Huffington Post.

Hey, what's this, Worthington is also at the far-left Counterpunch, another bastion of objective journalism.

Who's this guy Worthington at AlterNet defending Jose Padilla?

Why, it's the same guy with a New York Times byline.

Shocking, isn't it?

Over at Guantanamo Blog, there's also a guy named Andy Worthington.

Why yes, it's the same author.

Antiwar Radio also lists an Andy Worthington. I'll go out on a limb and say it's the same guy.

Amazon lists the book by Worthington entitled
The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 759 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison.

But the editors at the New York Times "were not aware" of his background.

Paging Clark Hoyt, come in Mr. Hoyt.

Hot Air, Ed Driscoll and NewsBusters link. Thanks!

Thanks, AP! Secret Club Gitmo Facility No Longer a Secret

Those foot soldiers in the War on the War on Terror have a real coup today, releasing more secret details about our facilities at Guantanamo Bay.

How did the New York Times not manage to get this scoop?

I've got to say, though, why the hell are we giving interviews to an obviously hostile press and confirming what's supposed to be secret?

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Somewhere amid the cactus-studded hills on this sprawling Navy base, separate from the cells where hundreds of men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban have been locked up for years, is a place even more closely guarded — a jailhouse so protected that its very location is top secret.

For the first time, the top commander of detention operations at Guantanamo has confirmed the existence of the mysterious Camp 7. In an interview with The Associated Press, Rear Adm. Mark Buzby also provided a few details about the maximum-security lockup.

Guantanamo commanders said Camp 7 is for key alleged al-Qaida members, who must be kept apart from other prisoners to prevent them from retaliating against long-term detainees who have talked to interrogators. They also want the location kept secret for fear of terrorist attack.

Well, so much for that.

Hey, why not just provide coordinates and allow for a Google Earth search?

Many operations have been classified since the detention center opened in January 2002 in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. More than four years passed before the military released even the names of detainees held on this 45-square-mile base in southeast Cuba — and it did so only after the AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request.

Detainees have been held in Camp Echo and Camps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Journalists cleared by the military have been allowed to tour some of these lockups, where 260 men are held, but aren't allowed to speak to detainees. Some lawmakers and other VIPs have passed through, and the International Red Cross has access, but doesn't divulge details of visits with prisoners.

But the Associated Press will be more than happy to.

Camp 7, where 15 "high-value detainees" are held, is so secret that its very existence was not publicly known until it was mentioned in December by attorneys for Majid Khan, a former Baltimore resident who allegedly plotted to bomb gas stations in the United States. Previously, many observers believed the 15 were being held in Camps 5 or 6, which are maximum-security facilities.

"Under the gag order ... we are prohibited from saying anything more about their camp," lawyer Gitanjali Gutierrez, who met with Khan in October, said Tuesday. Most of the lawyers' notes and memos have been stamped "top secret" by the government.

Buzby told the AP he is sharply limiting to a "very few" the number of people who know Camp 7's whereabouts.

Read the rest.

Gutierrez, naturally, works for the CCR and the America-hating Columbia professor and generous Democrat donor Michael Ratner.

Would be nice some day if the media bothered to ask those who've received Ratner's money whether they have a problem taking funds some someone who works so hard on behalf of terrorists.

UPDATE: Ringo the Gringo notes the inmates at Think Progress are wetting themselves over this news.

Parade of Pinheads

A motley assortment of human debris descended up Washington Friday.

Jonn from This Ain't Hell was on hand and captured the above photo.

Check out his link for more photos and coverage.

Saudi Club Gitmo Resident Charged in Ship Plot

Of course the left will have a difficult time swallowing this news, as they all know the poor folks at Guantanamo Bay are just political prisoners who mean us no harm.

Prosecutors for the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals charged a Saudi Arabian prisoner on Thursday with plotting with al Qaeda to blow up a ship off the coast of Yemen or in the Strait of Hormuz.

A Pentagon spokesman said the captive, Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al Darbi, was formally served with charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. The charges still must be approved by a Pentagon official overseeing the Guantanamo tribunals before they can proceed to trial.

Al Darbi is accused of training and teaching at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in the late 1990s. The charges also allege that in 2001 and 2002, he traveled around the Middle East shopping for boats, global positioning devices and crewmen as part of a plot to use explosives-laden vessels to attack a ship off the coast of Yemen or in the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.

Meanwhile, a former Club Gitmo resident goes free in the UK, with bail money put up by nitwit actress Vanessa Redgrave.

Osama bin Laden is 'lovely'

All those in Australia who worked so hard to free terror suspect David Hicks from Club Gitmo must be so proud of themselves today.

For all the bedwetters who fret over the harsh treatment of the guests at Guantanamo Bay, let it be known these guys are there for a reason.

Maybe some day you'll figure it out.

DAVID Hicks described Osama bin Laden as "lovely" and trained with al-Qaeda a month before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a court was told.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) also told a court in Adelaide today that Hicks could still be seen as a perceived threat to Australia.

The AFP today asked the Federal Magistrates Court to impose a control order on Hicks, the convicted terrorism supporter and former Guantanamo Bay inmate who is due for release from an Adelaide jail in nine days.

That's right, folks, in nine short days, these nice fellow will be free to roam.

Make sure you check in with us when this miscreant next makes it into the headlines, OK?

AFP lawyer Andrew Berger said Hicks had admitted taking part in four al-Qaeda training camps between January 2001 and August 2001 - a month before the terrorist attacks in the US.

He also detailed letters from Hicks to his family in Adelaide during 2001.

Mr Berger said in a May 2001 letter to family, Hicks wrote: "By the way I have met Osama bin Laden 20 times now, lovely brother, everything for the cause of Islam. The only reason the west calls him the most wanted Muslim is because he's got the money to take action."

Hicks admitted he attended al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan in an interview with AFP officers while detained at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in May 2002, Mr Berger said.

Hicks undertook "substantial training" in basic arms and combat training, guerilla warfare and advanced marksmanship, he told the court.

"It was a systematic and sustained attempt to seek out training," Mr Berger said.

"This is not a man who was full of hot air."

Read the rest about this enemy of society.

Attempted Suicide by Fingernail at Club Gitmo?

Give that terrorist some style points.

AN inmate in the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay has survived a suicide attempt in which he slashed his own throat with a sharpened fingernail.

Commander Andrew Haynes, the deputy commander of the guard force at the prison, said he doubted last month's incident was a real suicide attempt, calling it an act of "self harm".

The incident occurred while the man was having his daily shower. Guards gave him first aid and sent him to the prison clinic, the Associated Press reported.

"There was an impressive effusion of blood,'' Cdr Haynes told reporters visiting the base.

A medical officer said the prisoner received several stitches and spent a week under psychiatric care.

There have been four suicides since the US opened the military prison at Guantanamo in January 2002 for men suspected of involvement in terrorism or links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Freed Gitmo Detainees 'Still a Threat'

The media, ACLU and Democrats caterwaul for years about how unfair life is for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay; then we go and release some of these folks back to their native countries and lo and behold, the Associated Press discovers that might not have been such a good idea.

Interestingly though, there does seem to be some preference given to Saudi detainees.

Hmmm. There's that cozy relationship with our key ally.

Files raise questions on Gitmo transfers

Two dozen prisoners were cleared for transfer from Guantanamo Bay last year even though U.S. military panels found they still posed a threat to the United States and its allies. Dozens more were cleared even though they didn't show up for their hearings.

One Saudi arrested in Afghanistan was approved for release after offering a peculiar account that he had gone to the Taliban-controlled country to lose weight.

Pentagon documents obtained by The Associated Press show seemingly inconsistent decisions to release men declared by the Bush administration to be among America's most-hardened enemies. Coupled with accusations that some detainees have been held for years on little evidence, the decisions raise questions about whether they were arbitrary.

Human rights groups contend the documents show the military panels, known as Administrative Review Boards, often are overridden by political expediency at Guantanamo, where about 340 men are still held.

"What it says on your passport is more important than what it says in your ARB," said Ben Wizner, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, noting that European citizens at Guantanamo were among the first to get out amid intense lobbying by their countries. "It's all about diplomatic pressure."

Indeed, there does some to be a curious relationship concerning some purported allies. But why on earth are suspects who are still considered a danger released knowing their home countries would soon free them?

The Pentagon created the Administrative Review Board process in 2004 as the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was filling up with men captured around the world in the war on terrorist groups. It said the boards would "help ensure no one is detained any longer than is warranted, and that no one is released who remains a threat to our nation's security."

The boards hold sessions in an air-conditioned trailer, hearing testimony from shackled detainees and making recommendations on whether to transfer, release or continue to hold the men. The final decisions are made by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, who is not bound by the recommendations, but who officials say usually follows them.

The Pentagon, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from AP, released transcripts and memos last month from last year's hearings.

Based on those sessions, England ordered 273 inmates kept at Guantanamo and 55 transferred to authorities in other nations. He didn't order any outright releases, but most detainees transferred from Guantanamo have been freed soon after arriving home.

The heavily censored documents indicate testimony before the panels often had little effect on the outcome. Of the 55 detainees cleared for transfer to their homelands or countries of residence, only 14 participated in their hearings. And 24 found to still pose a threat were ordered transferred by England anyway.

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a military spokesman, said "a great majority of detainees who left Guantanamo have been a threat," but added that many factors are considered in deciding their fate.

"There are mitigating factors that the deputy secretary of defense can take into account in deciding whether to approve a transfer of a detainee," Gordon said by phone from the Pentagon.

U.S. officials say those include whether the receiving country can confiscate the detainee's passport and monitor or detain him.

Sure, that'll stop them from rejoining the battle.

Dig the story from this guy:

Abdul Rahman Mohammed Hussein Khowlan, a Saudi, said he went to Afghanistan to lose weight and to find the Prophet Muhammad's clothing — even though the founder of Islam had never been in that country.

A board member asked Khowlan to explain the search, but the detainee, who allegedly was carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle when he was captured, responded: "There's nothing to add."

England ordered Khowlan sent home to Saudi Arabia, whose government is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East.

Rights Group Protests Release of Gitmo Detainees

Ever since Club Gitmo opened so we could detain some of the most feral two-legged animals on the planet, there's been an endless cacophony from the pinko left about how inhumanely these monsters are being treated, never-ending calls for the place to be shut down and never the slightest bit of consideration on their part that these creatures want to kill us all.

Now that the drumbeat results in the release of some of these terrorists, what do we hear?

Complaints about them being released.

You can't make this stuff up.

As the detainee population at Guantánamo shrinks, activists say much worse fates await some prisoners upon release

Six long-held captives at Guantánamo were sent home, two to Tunisia and four to Yemen, the Pentagon said Tuesday, swiftly drawing denunciations from human rights groups.

The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York identified one of the Tunisians as detainee Abdullah bin Omar, 51, and said his return ``put him at grave risk for torture and abuse.''

Now hold on a minute. I thought these poor fellows at Gitmo were subjected to torture and abuse? How can it be that releasing them from the horrors of Club Gitmo would endanger them? I thought the U.S. was the great abuser of human rights inthw world? You mean there are "regimes" more evil than us?

The law center, which has sued the Bush administration on behalf of Guantánamo detainees, said that before bin Omar's capture by U.S. forces he had been living with his wife and eight children in Pakistan, where he unsuccessfully sought political asylum.

It asserted that he had been convicted in absentia in the early 1990s of association with a ''moderate, nonviolent Islamist political party, Ennahdha'' -- and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

''What has happened to American justice? How are we any safer by sending cleared men back to notorious regimes in the dead of night?'' said bin Omar's attorney, Zachary Katznelson.

The Pentagon said it has 80 more detainees held as ''enemy combatants'' to send away from Cuba, ``subject to ongoing discussions between the United States and other nations.''

Human Rights Watch also raised concerns.

''Most of the detainees desperately want to go home. But there are a small number who are at such grave risk of torture that they would rather stay in Guantánamo,'' said Jennifer Daskal, advocacy director in Washington.

Funny how we haven't heard about that before.

UPDATE: Go figure. Now they may close Club Gitmo after all. Via LGF.

The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and move the terror suspects there to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned.

They better not be on U.S. soil.

WaPo Frets Over Club Gitmo Detainee

The sad saga of the Gitmo detainee apparently nobody wants.

Here's a suggestion. Send him to the nearest ACLU office. I'm sure they'd be happy to have him.

Yemeni Languishes at Guantanamo Long After U.S. Approved Release

SANAA, Yemen -- The word came in May 2006: Ali Mohammed Nasser Mohammed, a slight, 24-year-old Yemeni with curly black hair and a wispy beard, would be freed from Guantanamo after more than four years. He got a checkup. His photo was taken, as were his fingerprints. He was measured for clothes and shoes, then offered a meeting with the Red Cross.

As the Pentagon tersely put it later in an e-mail to his attorneys: "Your client has been approved to leave Guantanamo."

"He never went home," said Martha Rayner, one of the lawyers.

In the legal netherworld that the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has represented since it was opened in 2002, Mohammed, once a cook for the Taliban in Afghanistan, remains stuck in a limbo of mistaken identities, bureaucratic inertia and official neglect. In the eyes of his lawyers, the young Yemeni's case is an indictment of a system, still cloaked in the strictest secrecy and largely beyond accountability, in which a man who faces no charge and no sentence remains deprived of the freedom he was granted more than a year ago.

"It's a lovely illustration of what happens when there's no oversight of the jailer," said a rueful Rayner.

Perhaps the rueful Rayner can set up shop in some wonderful worker's paradise such as Cuba or Venezuela, and she can put him up.

Just before he was to depart on May 18 of last year, on a flight that carried 15 Saudis home, Mohammed was left off the plane for a simple reason: The Saudi government said he was not Saudi, even though he was born there. Under Yemeni and Saudi law, he is Yemeni, by virtue of his parents' citizenship. He carries a Yemeni passport, grew up in Yemen and went to school in Sanaa, the capital, where his parents live.

Oh well. Maybe he never should have taken that job as a "cook" for the Taliban.

Gitmo Still Open For Business

Much to the consternation of Farah Stockman at the Boston Globe, Guantanamo Bay remains open for business and is taking in new clients. This, of course, does not go over well with the media lapdogs who specialize in printing press releases from terrorist-loving "human rights" groups.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has transferred three suspected terrorists to the Guantanamo Bay prison since March, despite recent legal setbacks and President Bush's statement that he would like to close the controversial facility.

Other than leftwing agitators, exactly who is Gitmo controversial with? Stockman doesn't elaborate.

The three detainees are the first to arrive in Guantanamo Bay since 2004, with the exception of those who were abruptly transferred last fall when Bush closed secret CIA prisons in Europe after their existence became known. Two of the recent transfers were captured in a sweeping counterterrorism operation in Somalia. The third is Iraqi.

Secret prisons that were secret, until the media divulged their existence, that is.

The lack of new arrivals -- and the large number of detainees who were being sent home -- had led many human rights advocates to believe the Guantanamo Bay prison was being phased out amid widespread international outrage.

Again, manusfactured outrage fomented by the left, who clearly are not rooting for America to win in the war on terrorists.

But now, new detainees are arriving and the flow of releases has slowed significantly -- from 102 last year to 15 this year.

"It's like Guantanamo is getting its second wind, and becoming a permanent option," said Joanne Mariner, director of the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program at Human Rights Watch, a New York-based human rights organization.

Some legal advocates for detainees expressed concern that the prison is being used for detainees from the Somali operation.

"Rather than closing Guantanamo, they are using it for the next phase, in another front in the war on terror," said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York-based law institute that focuses on justice and democracy. "It shows that the administration still believes Guantanamo is a viable way to hold people indefinitely without due process.

Why is it we rarely, if ever, hear about human rights on the rest of the island of Cuba?

Senate Looks to Restore Rights for Terrorists

It's bad enough these morons want to give criminal aliens citizenship, but now the Senate also wants to bestow rights on the scum at Gitmo. Never in my memory has a country gone out of its way to commit suicide.

Guantanamo prisoners and other foreigners got a step closer to regaining the right to challenge their detention in the U.S. courts in a bill approved in a U.S. Senate committee on Thursday.

The Judiciary Committee voted 11-8 to send the proposal to the full Senate for debate, with Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania the lone Republican joining the Democratic majority.

Congress last year revoked the rights of foreign terrorism suspects labeled "enemy combatants" to challenge their detention by the United States. The Bush administration said it was necessary to prevent them from attacking Americans if freed.

The move affected about 380 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban captives held at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. It could also affect 12 million legal residents of the United States who are not U.S. citizens, said the committee chairman, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) of Vermont.

"I hope the Senate will reconsider the historic error in judgment," Leahy said.

Putting Leaky Leahy in the Senate, now there's a historic error in judgment.

Suicide at Gitmo

Well, this opens up a spot for someone else.

Death of Guantanamo Detainee Is Apparent Suicide, Military Says

A Saudi detainee at the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was found dead in his cell from an apparent suicide yesterday afternoon, military officials said. He would be the fourth detainee to take his own life at the facility in the past year.

Military officials at U.S. Southern Command did not release details about the death or identify the detainee, who was among about 80 Saudi Arabians in custody. Attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based law group that represents many Guantanamo detainees, said they had learned no details as of last night and did not have independent confirmation that the death was a suicide.

Of course, we're bending over backwards to be sensitive about the situation.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has started an investigation, and a cultural adviser is assisting officials at the base to ensure that the detainee's body is handled in a "culturally sensitive and religiously appropriate manner," according to the release.

I guess that precludes feeding him to the sharks.

UPDATE: He apparently had some training experience with the U.S. military.

Gitmo Prisoner Urges Release of BBC Reporter

Reuters eagerly laps up the propaganda from a Gitmo slug. Notice how this poor terror suspect is innocuously referred to as a television cameraman.

A television cameraman held prisoner for years at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has issued an impassioned plea for the release of a fellow journalist kidnapped in Gaza.

In an open letter to the kidnappers of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, Guantanamo detainee Sami al-Hajj of the al-Jazeera satellite TV network said Muslims should never be responsible for illegal detentions like the one he has endured at the hands of the United States.

"What the Americans are doing to me is very, very wrong," al-Hajj, a native of Sudan, said in the letter, which was made public on Monday by his lawyer.

"Yet this can never mean that a Muslim should similarly hold a British journalist, and put him and his family through similar suffering," he said.

"Please, then, as brothers in one faith, consider this gift that I request of you: That you release Alan Johnston as soon as possible, without conditions. While the United States has kidnapped me and held me for years on end, this is not a lesson that Muslims should copy."

Al-Hajj, 38, has been held at Guantanamo for nearly five years on suspicion of having links to Islamic militant groups. He has been accused of making videos of
Osama bin Laden.

He was picked up in Pakistan in 2001 and said in his letter that he would be on the 140th day of a hunger strike as of this past Sunday.

Poor thing. Must be starving. Still, I don't feel guilty having just consumed a nice steak off the grill.

The Horrors of Gitmo

Unscented deodorant and shampoo.

Oh my.

How do these brave jihadists soldier on?

Also at Jihad Watch.

Media Groupthink

Gerd Schroeder exposes the duplicitous media and their military coverage. Way too much to quote, so read the whole thing.

Supreme Court Will Not Hear Gitmo Appeals

Aww, the poor terrorists.

A closely divided Supreme Court said on Monday it would not decide whether Guantanamo prisoners have the right to challenge their confinement before U.S. federal judges, avoiding a test of President George W. Bush's powers in the war on terrorism.

Over the dissent of three justices, the nation's high court said it would not rule on the constitutionality of part of an anti-terrorism law that Bush pushed through the U.S. Congress last year that takes away the right of the prisoners to get judicial review of their detention.

I hope this makes for a very bad day for our nation's enemies (looking your way, ACLU lawyers).

Via Sweetness & Light.

Gitmo Suspect Claims Torture

Yawn. Another day, another claim of torture at Club Gitmo.

A suspected Saudi terrorist told a military hearing that he was tortured into confessing that he was involved in the bombing of the USS Cole, according to a Pentagon transcript released Friday.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national of Yemeni descent, said he made up stories that tied him to the 2000 Cole attack, which killed 17 U.S. sailors and nearly succeeded in sinking the $1 billion destroyer in Aden harbor, Yemen.

"From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me. It happened during interviews. One time they tortured me one way, and another time they tortured me in a different way," al-Nashiri said, according to the transcript. "I just said those things to make the people happy. They were very happy when I told them those things."

One day it was this way, another day that way. Thanks for clearing that up, Abd. Maybe it was loud music, maybe it was a few belly slaps. Get the ACLU on the case.

According to U.S. intelligence, al-Nashiri is the suspected mastermind of the Cole bombing, and was al-Qaida's operations chief in the Arabian Peninsula until he was caught in 2002. Nashiri, 41, a Saudi national of Yemeni descent, was allegedly tasked by bin Laden to attack the Cole.

In the transcript, al-Nashiri says he met with bin Laden many times and received as much as a half million dollars from the terror leader. The money, he said, was for "personal expenses" including for marriage and business deals.

He said he took money to buy a boat and develop a fishing business, and bin Laden later told him it could be used for a bombing. Al-Nashiri said he ended the project, and was not involved when bin Laden later used it "as a military tool."

The poor terrorist just wanted to go fishing and he mysteriously winds up in Guantanamo Bay. Oh, the horrors.

Aussie Terror Suspect Pleads Guilty

From this account, it appears he may be shipped back down under.

David Hicks has pleaded guilty to one count of supporting a terrorist organisation.

He pleaded guilty to a late night specially convened military commission after an apparent deal was reached between his defence attorney and the prosecution.

The plea raises the prospect that he will soon return to Australia.

It is unclear what sentence he will have to serve. There was no mention of how long he will have to serve, or if he will serve it in Australia.

The Military Commission will reconvene tomorrow (Tuesday) to enter a formal verdict.

It sure appears they have no shortage of bleeding-heart moonbats in Australia.

The Australian Demorats and Greens today condemned the ejection of Hicks's lawyers, saying it was further evidence of the the judicial process being rigged against the Australian.

"That's the problem with a kangaroo court, it makes its own rules," Democrats leader Lynn Allison said in Canberra.

"It's a continued abuse of justice and of David Hicks himself.

"We must remember this is just the beginning. It could be several years before he's brough to trial proper."

Australian Greens leader Bob brown compared the dismissal of Hicks's lawyers to the processes under the former Soviet Union's legal system.

"This court is nowehere near the level of justice that we expect in a Western democracy, particularly in Australia.

"It's got the Howard Governement's tick of approval but it is mightily unpopular with Australians and as it's unfolding it's going from bad to worse."